2 AIDS Patients Tell of Struggle, Criticize GOP

The devastating stories of two Southern Californians struggling with AIDS took center stage at the Democratic convention Tuesday night, moving to tears an audience riveted by a mother’s description of her young daughter’s death and a gay man’s plea for life.

The normally boisterous floor at Madison Square Garden frequently fell quiet as Elizabeth Glaser, 44, and Bob Hattoy, 40, took to the podium to recount how the fatal disease has ripped apart their lives.

The pair of Los Angeles residents also used the occasion to attack what they said was negligence on the part of successive Republican administrations in confronting the worldwide AIDS crisis.

Glaser, who was infected with the virus through a blood transfusion when she gave birth and unwittingly passed the disease on to her two children, spoke firmly and solemnly, with controlled emotion.

“Twenty years ago I wanted to be at the Democratic convention because it was a way to participate in our country,” she said. “Today, I am here because it’s a matter of life and death.”

Conventioneers sat transfixed and many began to weep as Glaser described the final year of her daughter’s life and her continued anguish that the disease will also claim her 7-year-old son.

“Exactly four years ago, my daughter died of AIDS. She did not survive the Reagan Administration,” Glaser said. “I am here because my son and I may not survive four more years of leaders who say they care--but do nothing.

“I am in a race with the clock.”

Hattoy, who spoke before Glaser, joined her on the podium at the end of her speech and the thousands of delegates erupted into one of the longest and loudest ovations heard yet at the convention.

Hattoy, an adviser to Bill Clinton and veteran environmentalist who learned last month that he has AIDS-related lymphoma, fought to maintain his composure through his remarks. He recounted what it is like to be a member of the gay community, to watch friends and lovers die, and then to find that you too have the disease.

At one point, he paused and shook his head. “Whew, this is hard.

“Listen, I don’t want to die,” he told the crowd. “I don’t want to die.

“But I don’t want to live in an America where the President sees me as the enemy. I can face dying because of a disease. But not because of politics.”

Glaser was infected 11 years ago and learned later that she had passed the virus through breast milk to a daughter, Ariel, who died in 1988, and through the womb to her son. Her husband, television actor and director Paul Michael Glaser, is not infected.

Elizabeth Glaser became an AIDS activist after her daughter’s death, helping establish the Pediatric AIDS Foundation in Los Angeles. She also has lobbied in Washington for funding of more AIDS research.

Hattoy praised his boss, Clinton, for having the “courage” to designate him as the first known AIDS sufferer to address a political convention. Hattoy is undergoing chemotherapy and other treatment.

“If there is any honor in having this disease, it’s the honor of being part of the gay and lesbian community in America . . . . We have not given up . . . . The gay and lesbian community is a family in the best sense of the word.”

As Hattoy and Glaser spoke, delegates brushed away tears and many were overcome with emotion.

“I’m sorry, I’m so upset,” said Mary Miyashita, a 72-year-old delegate from Whittier who still sobbed after the speeches ended. “I think it’s wonderful they’re up there. The country needs to be educated.”

“Fabulous,” Daniel Sabaro, a delegate from Woodland Hills, said of the speeches. Glaser’s remarks, especially, made him think of his own 2-year-old daughter.

“It just kills me to hear something like that,” he said.

In an interview last week, Glaser said her message to the convention had been growing inside her during the last four years, since Ariel’s death. She said then that she planned a personal message that described her frustrations and her hopes, and one she hoped would touch people’s hearts.

“I started out just a mom--fighting for the life of her child,” she said Tuesday night. “But along the way I learned how unfair America can be. Not just for people who have HIV, but for many many people--poor people, gay people, people of color, children.”

As she stood before her rapt audience, Glaser told of crying out for help and being ignored. She said she felt ignored by a Republican Administration in Washington, as well as by well-intended people who think the disease is “not their problem.”

“When you cry for help and no one listens, you start to lose hope,” she said.

Glaser said her health care bill is $40,000 a year--an impossible price to pay for someone who has no health insurance. And the drugs that keep her alive are simply not available to the poor, she said.

“Is their life any less valuable? Of course not,” Glaser said. “This is not the America I was raised to be proud of--where rich people get care and drugs that poor people can’t.”

Glaser closed her remarks with a homage to her daughter, whose “wisdom shone through” even in her last year, when she could no longer walk or talk.

“She taught me to love when all I wanted to do was hate,” Glaser said. “She taught me to help others, when all I wanted to do was help myself. She taught me to be brave, when all I felt was fear. My daughter and I loved each other with simplicity. America, we can do the same.

“This was the country that offered hope . . . . We all need to hope that our dreams can come true. I challenge you to make it happen, because all our lives, not just mine, depend on it.”

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